How To Piss In Public

Why Getting Knocked Out Is Better Than Not Fighting At All

Excerpted with permission from How To Piss In Public: From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthoodby Gavin McInnes.Freelance writing and making funny commercials is exactly what you’d expect it to be but working in TV is bizarre. Networks commission hundreds of pilots a year for big money, but for every eighty pilots they have written, only one will make it to air, and even then it will probably be canceled after a few episodes. It’s an entire industry where people are creating content for the garbage. I’m developing a show with FX right now called Trim about three straight guys who become hairdressers to get laid. The odds are about 100 percent it will never see the light of day but that’s just the nature of the beast. Some think it’s great. I know writers here in New York who don’t even want their shows to get picked up because they don’t want to move to L.A. I’m not like that. I’m too much of an attention whore to let things go unnoticed.

For example, I did a pilot for Al Gore’s network, Current TV, called The Immersionist. The pitch was, I wouldn’t just go and hang out with a group of people, I’d immerse myself in their lifestyle the way George Orwell did in Down and Out in Paris and London or Barbara Ehrenreich did in Nickel and Dimed. We picked a biker gang in Oakland called the East Bay Rats as our first “tribe,” and I flew out there to golive with them.

They call themselves the Rats because they live in a crackhead slum and their motorbikes were dirty pieces of sh*t made from scrap metal. Against all odds, I managed to ingratiate myself with the group and almost convinced their president, Trevor, to make me a Rat. Pretending to be in a motorcycle gang is fun as sh*t. We destroyed a car with sledgehammers and then hitched it to a tow truck and rode it around the neighborhood. We crashed motorbikes and raced tricycles down a mountain at neck-breaking speeds. And we fought.The East Bay Rats have a boxing ring in the backyard of their clubhouse and insist every member fight. When they asked me if I knew how to fight, I mentioned years of boxing experience, so they brought in a pro MMA fighter named Meathead Eric. He was a bald Asian kid with arms that looked like they were hiding bowling balls and shoulders as wide as an ox. He was nervous before he saw me but when I walked into the room with my shirt off, he smiled and started bobbing back and forth on the balls of his feet in anticipation. I wasn’t even remotely nervous because I had a plan. I was also a bit drunk.

One of the trainers at Church Street was the reigning IBF Continental Africa cruiserweight champion. He calls himself Jaffa “the African Assassin” Ballogou and yells sh*t like, “I AM A REAL MAN,” in the changing room as his penis swings around like a rubber snake in a Darth Vader helmet. We would spar occasionally and got to be such good pals, he let me in on a secret trick that wins any fight in the world.

The trick involves standing perfectly still and acting like you’re ready to receive a good right to the head. As the right comes at you, you immediately drop to your knees and nail the guy in the stomach. As he doubles over in pain, rise up off the mat like a phoenix and knock him out with a super uppercut to the chin. Bang. He’s out. Then the crowd cheers and girls start excreting juices. It never fails, but Ballogou told me I could use his black magic only as a last resort.

The referee snapped me out of my Ballogou flashback and reminded me I was in the ring with a monster. We were the first fight of the evening.

The referee introduced me as Sissy La La due to my less-than fearsome presence, while Meathead Eric was allowed to stick to his real name. As the bell rang for the first round, the bikers chanted, “Sissy La La,” again and again.

We sized each other up for the first round. We each threw a few loose jabs to the head to see how fast the other guy was. It became clear very quickly that this guy was a fighter jet and I was a horse-drawn carriage. He was an energized cat playing with an alcoholic mouse. I hit him in the face a few times and he accepted each blow as if it was a breath mint. I’m surprised he didn’t say thanks.When the uneventful first round ended, I went back to my corner and sat on a stool while nobody gave me a pep talk and told me what his weaknesses were. I looked around the backyard and it dawned on me that there were no paramedics. I thought, “What if things go bad?” I was starting to get nervous. “Sh*t, we’re in Oakland. We’d be lucky if 911 garnered any response from anyone. This could be my last night on earth. F*ck. What about my kids?”